Man exonerated in slaying after decades in prison faces new murder charge

FILE: Andre Davis speaks with his mother on a cell phone outside the Tamms Correctional Center in Tamms, Ill., after being released from prison after serving 32 years before DNA evidence overturned his 1980 conviction in the rape and murder of 3-year-old Brianna Stickle of Rantoul, Ill. (AP)

CHICAGO – A Chicago man who served 32 years in prison before DNA evidence overturned his conviction in the 1980 rape and slaying of a 3-year-old girl has now been charged with killing a man after a dispute in a dice game.

Andre Davis, 53, was charged with murder Thursday in the October death of 19-year-old Jamal Harmon, whose body was found shot and stabbed in an alley. A judge ordered Davis held without bond.

A second man, Derrick Hilliard, 37, was charged Friday with first-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in Harmon's death.

Prosecutors allege that Davis' nephew shot and wounded Harmon in a dispute over money lost in a dice game, then Davis helped load the man -- who was still alive, according to witnesses -- into the trunk of a car.

During Thursday's court hearing, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Robert Mack said witnesses also told investigators that Davis told people he had cut Harmon's throat and intended to dump the body, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

It was unclear Friday whether Davis or Hilliard had attorneys. Davis had a public defender at Thursday's hearing, but the Cook County Public Defender's Office said Friday that it was no longer representing him. Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, which represented him in the previous case, declined to comment on Davis' arrest or whether it would be representing him in the current case.

Davis was freed from prison in 2012, after spending more than three decades behind bars following his conviction -- before DNA testing was available -- in the 1980 slaying of 3-year-old Brianna Stickle in Rantoul.

In 2004, Davis requested that evidence gathered at the crime scene be tested. The tests revealed that blood and semen found at the scene did not come from Davis.

But it wasn't until March 2012 that an Illinois appellate court ordered that Davis be granted a new trial. A few months later, prosecutors dropped the case against him, and Davis was released from the supermax prison in Tamms.